


Aberrant Partner Consummates Pale Relations with Eccentric, Unstable Highblood, to Horror of Peers

by Fayghost



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gamzee is not a boy, Other, Pale Gamkar Month 2015, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 08:08:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3721477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fayghost/pseuds/Fayghost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You have to take the plunge, or you never will. You're not going to be outdone by a basement full of algorithms.</p><p>--</p><p>Done for day 1 of Pale Gamkar month, with the theme of "First Pile." Set in a vague post-game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aberrant Partner Consummates Pale Relations with Eccentric, Unstable Highblood, to Horror of Peers

Gamzee has been characteristically patient with you through an entire list of excuses. There weren't enough blankets-- there hadn't been, not until Rose had gifted you with a freshly alchemized batch. Then, it was that you wanted to find some way to blot the windows and warm the room in your new hive, because you know they get cold. The acquisition of curtains and a space heater was as unexpected as it was immediate, and this time you had Aradia to blame. Or Tavros, if he had spread the rumor.

You finally had to come forward about needing time, because as much as you've papped them and as many human months they've slept beside you in your human slab, that look they get in their eyes still makes your knees week and your pump crazy and sick. You don't want to be weak-kneed and pump-crazy when you subject your moirail to their first pile.

 _The first one didn't count_ , you explained once over breakfast. _It was horns, and you were bleeding everywhere and I was an ass and I didn't clean you up first. I smeared your awful makeup and we just lay there, not knowing what to do with eachother._ You couldn't help but be pessimistic, talking down into the table. _Like we knew it was all going to go wrong._

 _Knew to be pale for you,_ Is what they say. And you'd gone red to your ears and focused double on your oatmeal.

Sometimes when they go to sleep by your lap, you sneak open your husktop and with a good set of headphones go back to studying your old films. You try to summon confidence that matches the suavity of the actors on your cold screen, but it crumbles in the face of your warm moirail asleep at your side. They're dutiful and loving in a way that almost churns your stomach. They deserve the practiced grace and easy speech of some sort of pale champion, and maybe before you'd go charging at the title. But faced with the opportunity, you balk. You remember what it was like before.

Eventually you have a realization so sinking about the way they hang their head at your excuses that you can't make them anymore, and you blurt out a promise; “Friday. I'm sitting you down, and we're having a pile.” The way their eyes light up almost stops your lip from quivering. “It'll be perfect by then. I promise.”

Friday is here, and you're lighting the last candle in a dim, warm room with a mountain of perfectly laundered blankets, your heart going a mile. You have to go get them. If you don't, you'll get caught up on something like a wrinkled corner and they'll come in and find you a puddle of misery and self-loathing on the floor. _Not today_ , you say to yourself, puffing out your chest. You've all but given up on fantasies of military excellence, but just for tonight you'll borrow the image to lend you a little purpose. You march out of the room like Thereshecutioner Karkat might into a command block bristling with underlings, but quickly end up back as yourself when you see Gamzee on the couch. They lift their head with a look of... apprehension? Are they nervous, too?

Pity floods you, and you come up to them and take their hands. Your thumbs smooth over each knuckle and find the skin rough and scaly even though the rest of them is smooth, a detail you've memorized. “Come on, I owe you this. Let's go.”

They swallow, and nod, and you lead them by the hand into your den of what Dave might call _saccharine clown treachery_. In your imagination, at least.

The room is as prepared as you'd left it. The only thing you could want more is a pattering of rain to break the silence, but no such thing happens, leaving you to act decidedly alone. Gamzee certainly isn't likely to make a peep, not if their habits are anything to go off of. Another thing that makes you cringe.

You both walk to the pile, and without you asking or even so much as gesturing they flop down onto it like they've known the damn thing all their life, elbows above shoulders and shirt maladjusted just so to bare a stripe of their vulnerable middle. You gulp conspicuously; they aren't watching. You seriously doubt any of it is deliberate, but they look to you like something you might have dreamed up about them back when you were younger. Privately, you sour towards yourself for the millionth time that evening.

They blink aware, and look up at you with an unease brought on by your hesitation, and you hasten your descent to kneeling at their side, where you hover yet more. Your palms are sweating, and besides that, each limb shakes a little. To touch them like this, like you are, feels wrong-- sinful in an entirely different way than being _too saccharine_. You try to dry each hand on your pants as unassumingly as possible. Your vision catches, and locks upon, the flicker of Gamzee's heartbeat in their throat, and you think you feel a bit dizzy.

No, you are _not_ going to faint. You roll a fist closed once to test its dampness, find it suitable, and reach forward to touch them-- somehow, anywhere, anything but sitting here like an idiot while the world's most pitiful troll lies prone and waiting under you, looking at you with those eyes that might as well be little oceans for how you fall into them. In a moment of bravery, both palms meet their face, and you hush out low and smooth before the sight of them breaks your heart. Gamzee shuts their eyes, tilts up into your hands, and purrs.

 _Purrs_. Just a note, but it was there.

In your pause their gaze blinks right back open, and you blink in return. It's not until they move to sit up with an air of regret that your pan snaps back out of mush, and you hear them speak. “We ain't gotta be doing a thing before it's time to, motherfucker.”

“ _No_ ,” you say, surprised by your own tone. “Don't you dare get zen on me now, I promised you. Besides--” you pat the pile symbolically, and weakly flap a hand in direction of the candles. “Look at the work I put into this.”  
  
They humor you, taking it all in with a puff of breath from their snout. “Fit for the screen, motherfucker.”

“Damn straight,” You puff up, letting them lead you along into babbling to cool off your nerves. You'll even tolerate the pornographic insinuations. Are your inspirations too obvious? Fuck, of course they are. _Candles_. What were you thinking? It doesn't help that they're twice as piteous and alluring to you as any scenario churned from the bellies of the empires great script-computation devices, the way they're arcing gently in wait of your hands. You gulp again, seeing the title clearly in your head framed by the tell-tale triple diamonds; _Eccentric, Unstable Highblood Consummates With Aberrant Partner._

You have to take the plunge, or you never will. You're not going to be outdone by a basement full of algorithms. Half to hide your blush, half out of your very real tenderness, you rest down with your face into the crook of their neck and let out a groan to your own derision. Arms come up about your shoulders, claws clicking together as they stroke down your back. Gamzee hushes you politely.

“Thanks,” you mutter, but you reciprocate just as soon, smoothing palms up their arms and dusting lips across their throat. _Hesitantly_. But the barrier is crossed, so the buzz in your pan has to fade eventually. You hope. _Don't mess up._

Gamzee's purring rumbles back up for as long as your hands wander onto their middle, rubbing down into the dip of their waist or gently gripping their ribs. Eventually you give them a kiss and nudge them up, so that you have room plenty to rub their back.

“Want to talk about anything?” You offer, almost hopefully. Every touch of your hands along their back is given in high alert, hyper-aware of their reactions. “Now's the time.”  
  
“Maybe,” they say, almost a whisper. “Tell on at me how things have been.”

“You know how they've been,” you protest, tone defeated. “I hardly ever shut up around you.”

“Just start talkin, bro.” Their eyes close when you reach a particular spot beside each shoulderblade, and you hold your breath in hope for a purr. “On any kind of a thing. Be making your voice soft like.”

You do. Your voice is as soft as your hands, and you give Gamzee the dedicated attention of both. It's not until they start to sag into your grip that you realize your own heartbeat has slowed to a steady, even thump, and in the middle of a story about Jade's newest barometric discoveries you catch them in a slump down against your chest, laying both of you into the pile. The buzzing in your pan is an entirely different kind, now.

They look at you, eyes lidded and warm, and you gather them up in your arms and pet down the center of their back. The purring is constant, and just as loud from your own throat. You feel it vibrating in their wind chute when you kiss up the front of their neck, the middle of their sternum when you nuzzle against their chest, and everywhere else. Gamzee melts everywhere they're touched, so you put them on their back, feeling terror build up somewhere behind the bridge of your nose. You hope you can't overthink yourself into a nosebleed, but just because it hasn't happened _yet_ doesn't mean it's _impossible_.

They're calm. So calm. You hush them consistently as you look them over, rubbing knuckles against their ribs, carding their hair into place. The red bases of those horns are next, and you tease them with a claw until Gamzee gives a particularly agreeing noise. _Showtime_. No, nevermind, that word doesn't sit well with your previous imaginations. They get the flat of your fingerpads, slow and careful-- you have to remind yourself it's not exactly like you've never done this before, to undo the knot in your belly.

“Doing okay?”

Gamzee gives a soft _hmm?_ But nods afterwards, and sighs, adjusting down into the pile. You're thinking about how inviting it looks when you're pulled just so off your balance, hornsfirst into all the softness and give your masterpiece has to offer. At least it feels that way-- then palms are on your own cheeks and nuzzling into your throat in motions as slow as syrup, and the room feels dimmer and warmer than you'd noticed even when you were trying to perfect it.

“Are you sure--”

“Need some help breakin this thing in, motherfucker.” They mutter like their throat is full of honey, tangling every limb possible with you. “Aughtta smell like a brother. Aughtta be warm like him, too.”

You're more likely to make an undignified sort of peep than an argument, if you open your mouth, so you keep it shut while you answer their request with nuzzling and a rattle of your own. In time, your sweater gets too hot-- you shuffle out of it, left only in your t-shirt and the pressure of your binder. But the bare skin of your arms against theirs is fine, and competes with none of your usual apprehension. The pheromones must be kicking in. _Here we go_.

There's a primitive cell or two left in your sponge that suspects lethal consequence from going under, but there's enough Karkat in there to know you're in no danger at all. Not here, not from them. If anything....

The way they wind tighter about you draws a patter from your pump biscuit, and you hush, smoothing palms under their shirt and along their scarred back. You touch every old wound you can find like a promise. “Shhhh, I'm here. Not going anywhere.” You feel the way your warmth soaks into their skin, the way they shudder and cling to you. “I promised, remember?”

“Be givin me something, brother, please.”

Pleading will break your heart if you have to listen to it twice. You're on them in full force, then, palms smoothing in repeated circles against each cheek and down over their collar, hushing, sorting away hair and letting the tight kinks wind about your fingers. You can almost feel their pulse through their hornbed, when you touch it, going slow and steady like clockwork. “I'm here, I'm here.”

“Hurts too much to be beared,” they confess softly.

“Don't bear anything. Let me take care of you.” Your voice is just as thick and sweet as theirs, like the porridge you keep making for breakfast, and you pull one of the pile's blankets over them to provide another barrier. There, in your arms, they go still and dim in the eyes while the pain of eons-- eons and eons of selves and lives, all layered inside of them like sheen on a gleamshell-- is clearer to you than it's ever been. The thoughts of _My Fault,_ you know, are at least partially true.

But you don't let that stop you. If any of this is a mistake, it's one the both of you are glad to be making.

You keep smoothing back soft, fluffy cords of hair and watching their eyes for every moment the two of you aren't blinking, because those purple irises make you shiver even in your calm. It's blissful. It's perfect, and not for any of the candles you'd lit.

In a moment they seem particularly lucid, you speak to them.

“You make me feel like I'm worth something.”

Their eyes widen just enough in awareness, then soften again, and they move in to hook their chin over your shoulder. You can feel the pity coming off of them, you're sure of it. “Think I can be doing better than that, brother.”

You share every drop of their confidence, and settle down to listen to their pulse in their throat. All around both of you is softness and warmth. And from the other ear, just barely, you can make out the sound of rain.

  



End file.
